Not censorship

Things whose suppression is not necessarily censorship
(or at least, I feel there could be some debate about it).
General discussion of various hard cases,
the definition of speech, the role of the law, etc.

Obviously, some writing can essentially have no message,
make no point, and serve no purpose
other than to harrass, intimidate and upset somebody.

While I think some defence can be made for allowing
hate speech
in the abstract
(otherwise some forms of rational discourse may become fearful and impossible),
on the other hand pointless aggression against named living people
is surely behaviour -
along the lines of stalking or spam - rather than speech.

Provided it is pointless, of course.
And here there may be differences of opinion.
For instance,
I think much of what the
tabloids do (e.g. to the Royal family)
should actually be illegal
- but maybe that's just me.

And of course privacy can be invoked to essentially
prevent history being written.
In fact, I think it's a little sad
- even for those who would come out of it badly -
that we never get to see the true histories of our times.
They are written long after we are dead,
and then of course ironically, we, to whom they would be of the greatest interest,
cannot read them.
For instance, my family history is wonderfully detailed about people who are dead and forgotten long ago,
but then is stripped down to no more than skeletal information about everyone alive now.

There are many reasons why people want privacy,
but one of the main ones is fear of predators that will come into our lives
and attack us, the more they know about us.
In that sense, burglars, thieves and stalkers have a chilling effect on free speech.

The child porn issue
can be considered on many levels other than obscenity.
It can be considered as a privacy issue.
It can be considered as an aiding and abetting crime issue
- by not handing over the photographs of crimes to the police.

The Starr inquiry
and other queries into the sex lives of politicians
are not good for democracy.
The abuse that politicians (and other celebrities) get
in terms of publication of their private lives,
serves no function to democracy,
and one of its side effects is to deter many talented people
from public office.
Who would want all that abuse when you could make more money
- and keep your private life private -
in business.

But what if the information is not being published?
Should it be allowed exist at all? Should the police, for example,
be allowed hold a DNA database of every citizen?

The classic civil liberties position has always opposed compulsory ID cards,
DNA databases and other information the police may collect on the citizenry
as a whole.
But perhaps their opposition is becoming misplaced.
Perhaps the proper, the honest, solution is to campaign freely and openly
for more liberal laws
(such as reforming the drug laws),
so that no citizen, now matter how deviant their lifestyle, has anything to fear.

Civil liberties groups evolved in a situation
where the state
- by criminalising and oppressing
minority groups such as homosexuals,
contraceptive users, drug users,
atheists, blacks, aborigines,
women and Catholics
- was the greatest threat to civil liberty.
But if all these battles are won (and I agree the drug issue remains outstanding),
maybe we should look again at the privacy of modern society
- which allows serial rapists, killers,
attackers and burglars to operate uncaught
for years.
As conservatives have long pointed out, these people
are a threat to civil liberty too.
If there was a compulsory national DNA database,
rape (and rape murder) could become virtually impossible.
Even theft and burglary could be hard hit
- with the citizenry using their own home DNA kits to hunt for evidence.

So how about the following:

A DNA database of all citizens.

Tag all violent offenders for life,
so their whereabouts are always known (to a non-public computer).
You can still live, and do what you like.
All we ask is that we must know where you are.

Or even tag the whole population, so it is known where everyone is.
Make assault, rape, abduction and murder literally impossible.

Maybe civil liberties groups have it all wrong.
Maybe this is the future of civil liberties -
the end of crime,
in a liberal, pluralist state.

In summary, if we ever do win the battle to create a proper liberal state,
then maybe we will eventually come to see privacy
as the greatest single threat to civil liberty.
This is a long way off perhaps, but it's still something to think about.

The only reason we're in favour of free speech
is because we're in favour of freedom and liberty.
So how about when the speaker doesn't believe in freedom and liberty
for others, and threatens them?
How about these hard cases:

A site that makes an intellectual case for
bestiality.
Can such a case be made?
I'm not sure.
I can see that there is an argument
that this is not necessarily the same as supporting torture of animals.
After all, adult animals have sex all the time
(at least with each other).

Anyway, how about a site that does
support torture of animals for sport or entertainment
- hunting, circuses, dancing bears, and so on.

A site that makes an intellectual case for
pedophilia.
This is not necessarily a site supporting aggressive rape.
e.g. Say a site making an intellectual case
against the criminalisation of early- to mid- teenage sex.

Writing that does openly support aggressive pedophilia,
including the rape of toddlers,
such as the writings of
Ayatollah Khomeini.

In wartime,
an intellectual argument supporting the enemy
(e.g. the Iraqi resistance,
or the IRA).

Non-intellectual glamourisation of activities that threaten others:

Almost every Hollywood action movie glamourises or condones
things that would, in real life, threaten other people's liberties:

Car driving - If Hollywood car chases were true-to-life,
there would be dead passers-by in every film,
just as real-life police and real-life joyriders
do kill passers-by.

Guns and fighting as a solution to all problems.

Glamourisation of all forms of criminal abuse of others -
bank and
train
robbing, assault,
burglary, vandalism, arson, joyriding,
art theft,
kidnap, etc.
- all have been glamourised,
such as in the obnoxious The General.
Oddly enough, say, rape or child murder
is rarely glamourised.

In wartime or in a time of genocide,
a foreign media site linked to the enemy regime
(e.g. Serb TV)
and perhaps helping organise the genocide (e.g. Rwandan radio),
or encouraging the enemy
(e.g. Arab TV,
jihadi videos on YouTube).

In wartime, a home site
telling the enemy where military targets and informants are
(e.g. Wikileaks).

I'd like to say I have easy answers for all of these,
but I don't.
My instinct would be that
most of 1. and 2. have to be tolerated
as offensive speech,
whereas most of 3. and 4. cross the border into directly threatening people.
But I must say that it is hard to define the exact principles
I am using.

Avoiding offensive speech

While we might allow speech like that in 1. and 2.,
you do of course always
have the perfect right
to find the speech
disgusting,
and you should be able to filter it successfully
and completely out of your life.
Indeed, this applies to any
speech you don't like.

Part of the problem
with offensive speech is that with many media, like
TV or the cinema,
we cannot run advanced
personal filters
- we simply have to sit there and get assaulted by what is coming next.
But this is a personal technology
problem,
not a legal problem,
and it can be solved by giving the individual
more technology
to put them more in control of their life.

Some, or all, of the claims on the above web pages may be untrue
and libellous.
But is actually listing the URL libellous?

How can it be?
Linking to libel (without repeating it) cannot be libel:

First, I don't publish the actual claim, only a URL.
This is no more than saying:
"The Irish Times named the alleged murderer in its August 15th issue on page 9."
And it is provably true that the Irish Times made a claim
- whatever about the truth of the claim itself.

Second, I don't say I agree with them
(I don't say "whatever is at the end of that URL is true").
In fact, I have already forgotten what is at the end of that URL.

Third, the owners of the URL can of course change
(and may already have changed) what they say at that page without my
knowledge or consent
and, for example, make me accountable for hundreds of libels.
But I could hardly be guilty of libel if I had never heard of (let alone uttered) the claimed libellous statement.
For example, today's news is at
irishtimes.com.
Now, am I liable for whatever libels appear from time to time at the end of that link?

Of course, I'm not a lawyer, and a court may decide otherwise.
But the technology seems unstoppable:

And you can make the URL the name of a company
or organisation, so newspapers would have to be forbidden to print:
"abortion-information-ireland.com
issued a statement yesterday".

Crime fighting

Crimewatch UK
- Another example of how the Internet can be used by the "good guys" as well as by the bad.
All unsolved crimes should be listed on the Internet, searchable by area.
All stolen property
should be listed and described online, searchable by type.

Speech is one thing, behaviour is another.
I support the right of the Orange Order
and Klansmen to their publications and web sites,
which we can all read in a non-threatening environment.

But as to whether they should be able to rally and march
down the roads of upset and intimidated residents
is quite another question.
Marches are behaviour, not pure speech.

Demos and marches
are an odd form of speech,
one that often interferes with those who do not want to hear it,
in a way that, say, websites don't.
It seems to me that
demos and marches
should be restricted to city centres, not residential areas,
unless there is some good reason why they have to go to a particular place.

Spam is not a censorship issue.
You can read all the ads you like at the spammer's site,
if you choose to go there.
Spam is the enemy of free speech, by trying to destroy discussion groups and mailing lists.

Before 1992, I sent a few unsolicited messages myself.
It took some time for me (and others) to understand that this was a Bad Idea.
The Internet was quieter in those days, and no one complained to me or flamed me,
but I wish they had.
I should have realised sooner that unsolicited messages had no future.

Now there are hundreds of millions of people online.
If unsolicited direct-marketing commercial email is tolerated,
eventually everyone will be
receiving thousands or even tens of thousands of computer-generated email messages a day.
Already over 90 percent of email is spam.
Despite this,
spam is still legal in the US.
The only long-term solution is to make it illegal.
In the meantime, it is up to the Internet
to protect itself against these vandals.

Similarly,
warez
are not a censorship issue
(you can get the stuff at the author's site).
If you're shut down for spamming or uploading warez, I don't care.
Spam, warez and extreme forms of copyright theft are not speech.

I also don't think
framing disputes
are a censorship issue.
Framing can enable one site to make
someone else's content look like their own.
In my opinion:
Linking is referencing, and is a right, with or without permission.
Framing is reproduction, and is not a right.
You have the right not to be framed if you don't want it.

You can also use simple technology to
stop Inline linking
(e.g. bandwidth theft of your images).

None of these things require the law to be involved.

Of course, some people try to stop references to themselves
because, well, because they are mad:

Jakob Nielsen
on the inanity of trying to stop people
deep linking
to your site
- and, even though they have
already indicated what they are interested in,
forcing them all to go to the front door and
dump them there to try and find their own way round.

Nic Wolff
wrote a CGI script to take the bloated
Salon site
and present a
"de-boned", stripped down version of it
that loads fast.
While I could understand Salon
being angry about him presenting this as a website,
how about a CGI script that de-bones all sites?
Or a browser plug-in that de-bones all sites?